//Playlist Highlights

It looks like Seattle based Vendetta Red is alive and active. It’s been a long time since the release of Sisters of the Red Death, but it’s haunting music still finds its way into my music playlists. The catchy songs are beautifully vivid and heart breaking. In this concept album Vendetta Red confess and mimic horrors that tortured souls often can not escape.

Favorite Lyrics:

“And all pretty poems have to end. So I say this before I leave. If words are your weapons, my dear I surrender, surrender!” -Silhouette Serenade

Billy Talent was one of the first bands I went to see as a young adult. They were playing with Rise Against, Thursday, and Circa Survive at The Myth in St Paul, MN (Fall 2006). At the time I was working split shifts at the Post Office in Eau Claire, WI sorting mail, putting in 60+ hour weeks. I had a cheap mp3 player that had Billy Talent II and Rise Against (The Sufferer & The Witness) pretty much on repeat. There was something about the change of seasons and unhealthy work life balance that really had me crutching on these songs. That show is one that I continue to measure all future shows against.

Favorite Lyrics:

“Boy who always did what he was told, bought the only dream that he was sold” – Burn The Evidence

Just like everyone else at the time, this album didn’t leave my car for almost an entire year after it’s release. I remember when Alternative Press used to have a “Readers Chart” in their magazines, and The Black Parade held the number one spot longer than any other album that made it on that list. Almost 10 years later it still holds up as one of the most influential albums I’ve had the pleasure of listening to. My Chemical Romance re-union tour for 2016?….. please?

Favorite Lyrics:

“When the lights all went out we watched our lives on the screen. I hate the ending myself, but it started with an alright scene.” – Disenchanted

//Somewhere between St Louis and Indianapolis you’ll find a white Sprinter van barreling down the interstate. There is a mix of sleep deprivation, malnutrition, heat exhaustion, and somehow surprisingly great spirits. Catching grins and positive vibes has been the constant on this tour. A group of friends sharing an experience that can’t be mimicked on social media. The energy sticks to your bones and warms your heart. We aren’t alone in craving honest, intentional connections and The Millenium’s It’s So Much Friendlier With Tour brings together a group of bands that share that same communal goal. Thankful and restless we keep moving, waiting with bated breath for the next nights show. Tonight we will sing and dance and it will elate our human experience.

Indie pop band The Millenium released their ambitious project titled “Pine Hollow Sessions” on March 4, 2015. They invited me to film/edit the video portion of their project which in only 3 days gained more than 1K views on YouTube.

Below is an excerpt from the band’s tumblr describing the project…

Reaching back into the community, we connected with multiple friends, musicians, businesses, and more from around the area, whom were all extremely gracious and willing to assist us succeed in finalizing this dream. Every single facet of this project was contained locally which was something really cool we had never done before…

Our studio of choice was city favorite Pine Hollow Studios ran by the amazing Evan Middlesworth who has worked with and plays in numerous bands from around the area.

Album art and exclusive posters were designed by Ambient Inks who has printed shirts for us in the past.

Assist in instrumental arrangements were done by Kyle’s (Feather) old roommate who was a composition major at school

Additional musicians majors were brought from Eau Claire’s University for auxiliary additions.

Project release content and campaign strategy was brainstormed between Kyle and Isaac Risseeuw, who runs the UWEC social accounts

Kyle Culver’s dad who runs his own photography company took shots during the recording process.

The project was huge. Not only did we want to put out these songs, but we also felt it was important to combine them with a video release of us performing the tracks consistent with the session style of the project’s name. The songs and the process had become more than just something to hear, but we more so hoped that they would be something that people could feel. Each track had taken on such a feeling of emotion and sheer passion that it almost felt necessary to experience the session thoroughly; we wanted people to be able to be in the room with us while the music was created…

Within two days we had rehearsed, tracked, and filmed the sessions. For only a handful of songs it was some of the most work we had put into a release, and now the time is almost here for us to share with you a side of us that isn’t often seen.

March 4th, we will be officially releasing this project online for your eyes and ears. Here’s what you can expect:

The songs will be free. We want to keep up with our previous mantra of releasing music, so all tracks will be available on our bandcamp (themilleniumwi.bandcamp.com) for “pay what you want”, and yes that does include $0.00.

It will also be available digitally through all other online platforms. If you still would like to buy the album straight to your library because you love it just that much, you will be able to find it on Spotify, iTunes, Amazon, Google Play, etc.

There will also be a LIMITED press of the CD. We’re talking 100-200 copies of this release will be available max. And then we don’t have any plans to print more for a very very long time. These will be available on our online store, along with select tour dates.

A full 20 minute video of the entire session will be simultaneously released. This is a look into the project and has us performing each song as it is, in the studio.

I was riding with indie pop band The Millenium near the border of California when the landscape stretched out into miles of desert. We decided that this looked like the perfect location to do film their first video in a series titled “Rest Stop Sessions”. We exited off the highway, parked at the only gas station in sight, and scouted out a good place to set up. The guys ran through the song a handful of times before I got the camera rolling. 45 minutes later we were back on the road and I spent the next 4 hours in the van editing: The Millenium | Rest Stop Sessions – Her and Cigarettes (Cheap Girls Cover).

I’ve had some pretty exciting life changes the past few months, the most recent has landed me in Anaheim, California with some long time friends and musicians from the indie pop band The Millenium. Stay tuned for some video updates and lots of photos when I get back home!

I hopped on the light rail to see Say Anything and The Front Bottoms at the Varsity Theater the other night. I usually try to get something to bring back with me after going to a show, this time I was able to pick up a record from The Front Bottoms and they were even nice enough to sign it for me.

I’ve been building up a collection of songs on my phone for a couple months now and I finally had one of my songs stand out enough to begin pre-production in Pro Tools.

I start the process by importing one of the scratch recordings from my phone to help determine the tempo of the song. For this one, I ended up slowing the tempo down a bit from the original recording to 145bpm so that the chorus would have a little more room to breathe. My next step is usually transferring the root notes of the melody into midi notes. This can make it easier to lay out a simple song structure that is easy to change when needed. This song has a pretty standard pop structure that consists of: [intro][chorus][verse][chorus][bridge][chorus][chorus].

After mapping out the main melody and song structure, I moved on to mapping the foundations for drums. I didn’t spend too much time with them because I’d like to send this song out to a few drummers who might be interested in collaborating.

Next comes my favorite part, vocal melodies. I find it much easier to concentrate on vocals once everything else is mapped out. I can create a new vocal track with a little bit of compression and reverb to taste, and just play the song from the beginning letting out whatever mess of an idea that comes to mind. After listening back to a few vocal takes I’ll delete sections that are duds and keep sections that either have a nice melody or good lyrical content. I ended up making some small changes to the original chorus that was recorded on my phone, and kept most of the ad-libbed lyrics from the recorded track. After rewriting a few words here and there I’ll usually go back through and re-record the changes that seem to fit. This makes keeping up with new ideas much easier.

That’s really what encompasses my writing process. Create, record, review, tweak, and repeat. Sometimes an entire song will come out with very minimal effort, and other times I’ll spend most of my time tweaking sub par ideas. It’s almost never the same exact route for each song, but the more songs I write the easier it is to send it through this critiquing process.

There’s still a lot of work to do, but I look forward to polishing this song up so that I can share it with you!

I was driving to work this morning listening to Spotify on shuffle when Finding Something To Do came on. When Hellogoodbye released “Would It Kill You?” in 2010, it was such a breath of fresh air, I had the album playing in my car for months. Finding Something To Do is the perfect song to turn up and get lost in on a warm summer drive.

Over the next few months I will be working on writing one or two new songs that I want to release as singles.
To start things off I’ve been brainstorming and writing a bunch of scratch songs.

Whenever I sit down to create something new I get my phone out and hit record. If I create something even remotely close to an idea for a song I’ll make up a name for it and save it.

Some days I come up with some pretty awful ideas, and other days I end up with something I’m excited about. The trick is to keep writing and saving ideas.

After I get a decent collection of ideas I begin pruning them. I’ll go through all the takes and pick out one or two that interest me and see if I can work a little more out of them.

The constant creating and pruning help sift out ideas that don’t always come out all at once. Some songs come together with just a little effort while other songs need more coaxing.

Since I want to release just one or two songs as singles I will probably end up finish writing about 5-10 songs that I think have the potential to do well. To get those 5-10 finished songs I will probably write anywhere between 20-100 scratch ideas that are recorded on my phone!